How satiric is Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"?

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Satire, as defined by Bennett and Royle, is "the humorous presentation of human folly or vice in such a way as to make it look ridiculous" . It generally retains the appearance of rigorous logic, buttresses premises and arguments supported by formally correct proofs and eventually leads the reader to a conclusion of outlandish impossibility or striking absurdity. "True satire", writes G. K. Chesterton "is always, so to speak, a variation or fantasia upon the air of pure logic" . In A Modest Proposal, this fantasia lies in the extraordinary discrepancy between an apparently coherent, authoritative and benevolent discourse - whose logic the reader is initially prompt to endorse - and the effect of monstrous absurdity that it unexpectedly produces as the reader becomes aware of its real implications. If laughter is the result, the satirist, however, uses the logic of rhetoric in a manner different from that employed by the humorist, as his aim is to produce laughter directed at something : i.e. at the ridicule of a situation reflecting by contrast a set of powerful understatements.

Extraits

[...] Inhumanity has become a form of value. The narrator is not consciously malevolent but it is precisely his unconscious indifference which creates the scathing irony of this satire. His unaware cruelty is fully exposed as he acknowledges having always considered this feeling as the most foreign to him, as his “strongest objection against any project”. Yet, in another sentence, poor people are portrayed as a “grievous encumbrance”. There is no need to deplore their conditions, “because they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin [ Here the force of the irony is heightened by the violence of the words themselves. [...]

[...] The following assertion, for instance, is remarkable: grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords; who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best title to the Children.” As it ironically points to the rapacious attitude of those lords, words acquire a second meaning that was irrelevant to the first reading and was thus unnoticed. The word "dear" at the beginning of the sentence is shocked out of its neutral register. It stops being a mere synonym for expensive, and regains its moral connotation. We are reminded by those babies that human life is actually dear - or should be so[13]. The situation of the text become so grim that the reader does not even take it for granted anymore. [...]

[...] They emphasize its understatements and shed light on Swift's own political conception of the situation. In another trifling metaphor, it is asserted that the implementation of the proposal would increase the care of mothers when they would be ] sure of a settlement for life for their poor babes, provided in some sort by the public [ The expression some sort” is both an ironic signal and a reminder that no such a sort of generosity actually exists in Ireland. [...]

[...] How satiric is Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal"? Satire, as defined by Bennett and Royle, is humorous presentation of human folly or vice in such a way as to make it look ridiculous”[1]. It generally retains the appearance of a rigorous logic, buttresses premises and arguments supported by formally correct proofs, and eventually leads the reader to a conclusion of outlandish impossibility or striking absurdity. “True satire”, writes G. K. Chesterton always, so to speak, a variation or fantasia upon the air of pure logic”[2]. [...]

[...] The more satiric is the proposal, the more powerful the underlying condemnation. One of the main factors giving A Modest Proposal its satirical strength is not the horror of the proposal itself, although detailed in gruesome and truly disgusting developments, but the personality of the narrator[4]. At first glance, he is a public-spirited Irishman who has devoted many years to studying the needs of his poverty-stricken island. Like many others - think it is agreed by all parties [ - he can hardly help being concerned about the dreadful economic conditions which confronts the kingdom. [...]